Another Leader Quits Post in Syrian Exile Group

Free Syrian Army fighters during an offensive against forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, in Aleppo, on Monday.Credit
Reuters

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The main Syrian exile opposition group suffered new turbulence at the top on Monday, when the prime minister of its still-notional interim government resigned.

The resignation came two days after the opposition group elected a new president as it tries to unify and arm the rebels fighting the government of President Bashar al-Assad and to help civilians in rebel-held areas of Syria.

The prime minister, Ghassan Hitto, was appointed in March to assemble an administration that would govern rebel-held territory. It was not immediately clear why he resigned. But the opposition’s efforts to establish that administration and a unified military command, and to obtain greater military support from the West, remain nascent at best. The United States and its allies have pledged to increase aid, but so far there has been little apparent impact, and members of the coalition have complained that it is hard to make progress when the West is not fully committed to helping them.

“The circumstances which have become known to all did not allow me to initiate work on the ground,” Mr. Hitto said in a statement on the group’s Facebook page announcing his resignation.

Mr. Hitto had taken a hard line against holding any talks with the Assad government, a stance that posed difficulties as the United States and Russia tried to organize peace talks in Geneva. Mr. Hitto was chosen after some members of the exile group, the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, had criticized the coalition’s president, the Damascus religious scholar Moaz al-Khatib, for floating the idea of negotiating with elements of the government.

The group’s new president, Ahmad Assi al-Jarba, also expressed skepticism about talks in his first public statements on Sunday, declaring that the coalition would not attend the Geneva talks unless its military position improved first.

Mr. Hitto, a naturalized American citizen from Damascus who lived in Texas for years, was seen by American officials as a capable technocrat. He helped manage the exile group's humanitarian aid effort, visited rebel-held areas several times and urged his colleagues in the opposition group to visit as well.

But he faced several challenges: despite the visits, he was seen by some rebels and activists as out of touch with the country, and some members of the often-squabbling coalition complained that he was a favorite of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and of its main foreign backer, Qatar. Many in the Syrian opposition say Qatar wields too much influence in the movement.

Mr. Jarba, who is seen as close to Saudi Arabia, a rival of Qatar for influence among the rebels, was seen as a counterweight to Mr. Hitto and his Muslim Brotherhood backers.

He has been busy in the first few days of his tenure, visiting several rebel-held towns inside Syria, announcing that the rebels will soon get a new shipment of sophisticated weapons from Saudi Arabia, and calling for a truce during the holy month of Ramadan, which begins this week. The truce proposal appeared intended to allow aid to reach besieged rebel-held neighborhoods in Homs, in the center of the country, where government forces are pressing an offensive.

Yet Mr. Jarba holds few cards to pressure his foes, as he made clear in one of his first statements after being elected on Saturday. He said that the opposition would not attend the proposed peace talks if its forces continued losing ground.

“Geneva in these circumstances is not possible,” Mr. Jarba told Reuters on Sunday. “If we are going to go to Geneva, we have to be strong on the ground, unlike the situation now, which is weak.”

He spoke after a trip to Idlib Province, where he met with leaders of rebel forces and discussed the situation in Homs. “I will not rest until I procure the advanced weapons needed to hit back at Assad and his allies,” he told Reuters. “I give myself one month to achieve what I am intent to do.”

Mr. Jarba, 44, who holds a law degree from the Arab University of Beirut and was once a political prisoner, was elected to his office by a narrow margin in a vote among the coalition members, defeating a Brotherhood-backed candidate, Mustafa Sabbagh, a businessman. He belongs to a prominent Arab tribe that extends beyond Syria.

He issued a plea for help for the city of Homs, which has been blockaded and bombarded for more than a year, including a withering new air, artillery and ground assault that began in late June.

“We are staring at a real humanitarian disaster in Homs,” Mr. Jarba told Reuters on Sunday.

Government forces have been trying to capitalize on several recent advances in Homs to regain control of central parts of the city that were in rebel hands. Some rebels say the government troops are being supported by fighters from the Shiite Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, as they were in the recent battle in the nearby border town of Qusayr.

Mr. Jarba’s call for a truce came after two-thirds of the city’s Khalidiya neighborhood was reduced to rubble, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based antigovernment watchdog group that tracks the fighting through a network of activists in Syria.

“Of all Syria’s cities, Homs has suffered the highest levels of destruction,” the group’s director, Rami Abdel Rahman, told Agence France-Presse. “Much of it has been flattened.”

The government says that it is fighting to clear the city of terrorists and foreign fighters, and that it has succeeded in advancing into parts of Khalidiya.